I started at point A and have traveled from point Z to G to ... a whole lot of places I was not prepared to go.
Point A was William James walking into a funerary rite of Daoists. He drinks the tea, eats all five plates of fruit, and blows out the candles (lamps) so that the dead person can't find their way to immortality.
James explains to the curious attendees that although what they believed is true for them, it is not true for him (even though it is true because they believed it is true) so he felt compelled to blow out the light because... well it was interfering with his useful and pragmatic stream of consciousness.
So, I went from this imaginary place to a whole lot of Gifford lectures on natural theology wherein I was sitting in an uncomfortable chair somewhere in Scotland.
I could not study the chair as the object that it was, but I knew in my heart there was value to the chair and there must be a reason it was so uncomfortable.
Then I went back to the Daoists, disturbing the Qi (energy) among them to see if maybe that chair was in a bad feng shui position in the universe. That would explain, I thought, why it was so uncomfortable.
Well, the Daoists were busy meditating and I could not catch my breath to ask them this very important question about the placement of that uncomfortable chair.
So, I went back to the University of Edinburgh and Carl Jung was ushering me to my seat (yeah, the same uncomfortable chair) when I realized I needed to really focus on my point before atheism entered the picture and started effecting my liver.
Yeah, that's the winding road of my essay.
Me and Montaigne, we're like that!
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